Mormon March Madness – Sweet 16

It’s Sweet 16 time in Mormonville, so let’s all go on a group date together and decide who’s moving on and who’s going home!

The Round 2 voting didn’t produce many upsets–those all took place in Round 1. In the Modern Mormon Prophets Region, we’re down to the heavyweights as the Silver Fox, Elder Holland, and President Eyring all clubbed their opponents like stranded baby seals, and Elder Oaks snuck past his Apostolic cohort pal Elder Nelson.

In Ancient Scripture voting, girl-power was insufficient to carry Esther or Deborah into the Sweet 16, as Adam and Enoch won the day. (Any further accusations of a female bias at BCC will be moved off-site to the edge of Temple Square where no one can hear you scream.) With no more Book of Mormon reps to help out, it’s John the Beloved holding court against three Old Testament foes.

In the Early Mormonism Region, however, did anyone really think that poor Heber C. Kimball ever stood a chance against Eliza R. Snow? Or Sidney Rigdon against Emma? The awesomeness of an Emma vs. Eliza regional final is sufficient to declare voting for them to be “The Right Choice.” That said, few could complain about the appropriateness of Joseph vs. Emma, Joseph vs. Hyrum (or even Eliza vs. Hyrum!) coming out the vote.

Meanwhile, in the False Prophets Region–where you people already screwed everything up and ruined my life–it’s the Son of the Morning, Lucifer himself, against artist Jon McNaughton. Yeesh! Also, Stephen R. Covey will try to motivate the Priests of Baal into more Effective ways of calling down fire.

Vote today and tomorrow. We will reveal the winner and start Elite Eight voting in a couple of days.

Preach It:

Comments

Satan vs. McNaughton. I’ll hold off on the snarky comparisons, but will note that McNaughton has survived two rounds of voting to get here, while Satan had a bye in the first round of the False Prophets region.

I think Stephen Covey has gotten a bit of a bad rap here. Long before he wrote his 7 Repetitive Maxims for Highly Redundant Persons, (whatever), he wrote Spiritual Roots of Human Relations, actually a pretty good book, which I still have and consult on occasions.

I think that if you had asked me 5-6 years ago, I would have really, really struggled to pick any of the 4 from the Modern Mormon region. It’s still difficult, but I think I can at least decide cleanly between these two match-ups. The final will be brutal, though.

The pairings on False Prophets and Modern Mormons brackets felt like two 1 seeds. Really difficult! And it’s kind of too bad Elijah won’t have an opportunity for a rematch with the priests of Baal. They really caught fire during the last matchup, though Elijah’s hot hand prevailed.